WEB DESIGN
DEVELOPMENT
Petite Pups
Dog grooming & boarding, designed and built.
Services / Custom Web Design
Custom web design
in Dayton, Ohio.
Hand-built websites for brick-and-mortar businesses across Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus. Designed to load fast, rank on Google, and turn visitors into real inquiries. Not a template flipped to your colors. Custom from the first sketch.
What's included
Everything a real website needs, in one engagement.
A custom website project from Designed by John includes discovery, strategy, custom visual design, full development, content loading support, SEO setup, training, and a clean handoff, all delivered by one designer with 13+ years of experience. Everything is part of one engagement and one price. No nickel-and-diming. No "that wasn't in scope" emails six weeks in.
What you actually get: a site that looks like your business, performs on every device, ranks on Google, and is built to be edited by you after launch.
✓Discovery + written strategy
✓Custom design, no templates
✓Full development + staging
✓Responsive QA + accessibility
✓CMS setup + training
✓SEO foundation from day one
✓Launch + DNS cutover
✓Written handoff + recorded walkthrough
Who this is for
Brick-and-mortar businesses that care about craft.
The right fit
Brick-and-mortar businesses in the Dayton metro and Southwest Ohio. Trades. Shops. Restaurants. Professional services. Established businesses overdue for a rebuild. New ventures launching their first real site. Owners who care about craft and would rather have one experienced person on the project than a team of strangers.
Custom vs. template
Why custom matters.
Templates get you up fast. A template site can be launched in a week. It will look fine. It will probably even rank for your brand name. But it will also look like everyone else who picked the same template, the SEO setup will be generic, and the moment you need it to do something the template wasn't built for, you are stuck or paying to rebuild.
Custom takes longer up front. Six to twelve weeks instead of one. But the site is designed for your specific business, the SEO is built in from the foundation, the code stays clean as you add to it, and the result is built to last. If a template gets you what you need, use one. Most brick-and-mortar businesses pay for templates twice: once to launch, again two years later when the template no longer fits.
How the process works
Five phases, six to twelve weeks.
You get a real timeline and a real number from day one, not black-box pricing. Every project moves through the same five phases, named and dated, so you know where things stand without guessing.
01
Discovery
A kickoff conversation about your business, your customers, and your goals. Free, no commitment.
02
Strategy
Written plan: sitemap, content scope, SEO setup, timeline, fixed quote. You approve before any design starts.
03
Design
Mood direction, then full custom comps for the home page and key inner pages. Two rounds of revisions baked in.
04
Build
Development, CMS setup, responsive QA, accessibility, performance, SEO. Staging shared once it's ready for review.
05
Launch
Final review, DNS cutover, training session, written handoff documentation. You leave with logins, a guide, and a recorded walkthrough.
Featured custom web design work
Sites built this way.
What this costs
Custom quotes, every time.
Every business has different needs, so I don't believe in one-size-fits-all pricing. A basic site for a local startup needs a different strategy than a complex platform for a growing corporation. I provide custom quotes based on the specific goals we set together, so you only pay for the features that will actually drive bookings, calls, or foot traffic for your business.
Think of it as an investment in a tool that earns its keep every month.
FAQ
Common questions about custom web design.
Four I hear most often. Answered straight, no sales spin.
See all FAQsMost projects run six to twelve weeks from kickoff to launch. A focused essentials site is closer to six. A full custom build with branding and content development runs closer to twelve.
Yes. Every site I build runs on a content management system you can log into and edit yourself. I walk you through it after launch and leave you with a written guide.
Launch is the start, not the finish. My Ongoing Support and Hosting plans cover security, backups, edits, and SEO monitoring. You email me directly. Not a ticket queue.
Most clients are in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus because being local is part of how I work: coffee meetings, site visits, real conversations. But I have built sites across Ohio and a handful beyond. If you value a real partner over a vendor, location isn't a dealbreaker.
Ready to build something that works?
Let's talk about
what you're building.
Schedule a call, send a message, or call directly. Tell me what you're working on. I'll tell you whether I'm the right fit and what I think it would take.